The Mac Professional's Resource
In the ongoing security pissing match between lovers of OS X, Windows, and Linux, many often cite OS X lesser installation numbers as a reason for a relative lack of exploits. The “security through obscurity” theory postulates that all of those hackers coming out of the Eastern Europe, Asia, and the like would rather focus on a big target than a little one. Oh, there are plenty of proof-of-concept viruses and exploits out there, but their effectiveness in the wild is thing for debate.
Well, with hopes of nearly 10 million sales in the first 18 months and ubiquity in pop culture, the iPhone is decidedly not obscure, so I guess there is no surprise that Information Week tells us iPhone has its first trojan. Sounds scary right? Well, not so much. To use the Trojan, one needs to download a file and install it manually on the iPhone. For the vast majority of people who get their iPhone updates through Apple’s official channels, this doesn’t affect them. What it does mean is that the lazy iPhone hacker should only jailbreak his iPhone from a trusted source. As of this post, the website offering the download is offline, so maybe Apple has figured out how to be obscure again.
In other news, Opera software announced that the Opera browser is coming to the iPhone. If you’ve used the iPhone, you know that the built-in Safari is a great browser, but we welcome the choice of Opera as well, since it has always proved to be fast on any other mobile device and as long as iPhone users are stuck with EDGE data rates, they can use all the help they can get.
— Joe Fahs
With CES in full-swing in Vegas and MacWorld looming just around the corner, Apple chose to sneak a few product releases on to the public by announcing new Mac Pros and xServes. It has been a little easier to estimate new Apple product releases since the company has moved their products over to Intel processors and so the revisions to the top of Apple’s line had been suspected.
Apple has held back from releasing new computer hardware at MacWorld in recent years, usually saving product announcements for special events spread throughout the year. Still, the timing seems kind of odd. Normally, The Steved One wants to make sure whatever he is talking about at MacWorld will be the focus, and so product introductions occur a few weeks after his keynote. Perhaps Apple was caught off guard from the Bill Gates retirement video (Et Tu, Bono?) and needed something to keep them in the news.
Taking a look at things a little less cynically, it might simply mean that Jobs has such a huge list of things in store for MacWorld, he simply couldn’t be bothered with discussing how his company is using the latest 45nm processor cores for their top-of-the-line products. It’s sort of sad, really, because we sort of miss the days when Phil Schiller would put his cheese danish down and do a bake-off, but it’s much better than when Steve would have “New Visualizations in iTunes” as a bullet point for his keynote.
— Joe Fahs
As we mentioned last week, we are sort of down on the Internet movie download thing. This week sees more speculation arising as Apple is working on movie rental agreements with more studios, after many reports had Apple completing a deal with Fox last week. As Apple looks to compete in the video download business, these deals make sense for them. Unfortunately, the movie rental business does not yet make sense for consumers.
The rumors are that Apple is looking to do movie rentals starting at $3.99 for a 24 hour rental. That should be enough to woo some people who are too lazy to go to Blockbuster, but at that price, Netflix allows you to have up to three DVD movies at once for an unlimited amount of time. Additionally, the Netflix price comes with 16 hours of the “Watch Instantly” movies on demand feature, not to mention a much wider selection. And if you have invested a lot into your home theater, NetFlix offers HD-DVD and BluRay rentals, serving up picture and audio quality Apple can’t match. So while Apple might be better at wooing the studios in, there is much more work to do before their sweet talk works on the consumer.
— Joe Fahs
As Apple prepares to report on its first quarter results in a couple of weeks, expect to hear a lot of things about iPhone and iPhone sales. Many say that Apple is looking good to meet their sales targets 10 million units by the end of 2008 having sold nearly 5 million handsets so far.
In order to meet its targets, Apple is relying largely on growth in new markets, including Europe and Asia. The iPhone has been on sale in Europe only a few months, and its success depends largely on who you ask. In early December people touted that the iPhone was doing better than expected but by the end of the month, some outlets reporting iPhone sales failed to meet their projections, at least in the UK. In France, the iPhone sold 70,000 units in line with projections, but almost half of those were in the first week.
Apple may still meet its projections, but if the iPhone is going to be continued success in world markets, there will probably be some changes needed after the initial contracts run out. Partnering with AT&T in the US made sense because consumers here are used to being locked into one carrier. In Europe, where people are used to plugging their SIM cards into whatever device they think is necessary, and where some countries outlaw locked phones, things are a little different. I think Apple could have gone into Europe without exclusive carriers, but without the same Apple Store infrastructure, they needed some sort of incentive to get their products on retail shelves.
The other big problem with the iPhone is the price. Although the iPhone price is similar to competing smart phones, various things conspire to make it a lot less of a good deal in most of Europe. In France, the price of 399 Euro would equal $589. In the UK, the price is equivalent to $531. To get an unlocked phone will run you even more. Yes, straight currency conversions are not a particularly good judge, and non-US customers pay the Apple Tax on all of their products, but with more handsets available from more carriers in the EU, they might have to change their strategy.
— Joe Fahs
Every year numerous computer and/or consumer electronics companies hail that the age of “Golden Convergence” is going to be coming any day now. Every year, consumers laugh at what the companies are offering, and for the most part reject what are really half-assed attempts to squeeze more money out of consumers without providing that much more value.
In the latest news, Apple is thinking about movie rentals, NetFlix is thinking about releasing a set-top box for their downloads, and Tivo is trying to get people to remember that they can download using Amazon’s Unbox. Which one will win? Probably none of them. There are flaws to the way each company has gone about doing things, and with so many people fighting for a piece of such a small pie, nobody is making any progress.
Therefore, I say that Apple buys NetFlix and Tivo and rolls together a bunch of content offerings and distribution methods. Why? I like the way AppleTV brings the content to your home theater. I like the way NetFlix allows you to get a DVD in the mail, and they already have a huge subscriber base to grow from. Finally, I like the way that UnBox and Tivo remember what you have ordered, so if you can’t make everything fit on your computer, you can download it again without a penalty.
Of course I am idiot for thinking anything this sensible can happen, but a guy can dream, can’t he?
— Joe Fahs